


Nesting Dolls

by DachOsmin



Series: Standalones in which Cassian Andor Has A Bad Time [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Electrocution, Interrogation, Loyalty Tests, M/M, Mind Games, Rape to Maintain Cover, Secret Identity, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:15:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DachOsmin/pseuds/DachOsmin
Summary: While undercover as an Imperial officer, Cassian finds himself in a Rebel interrogation room.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Standalones in which Cassian Andor Has A Bad Time [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775749
Comments: 15
Kudos: 44
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Nesting Dolls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



It happens on Coruscant, in the middle of a long-game undercover mission. Cassian has crafted his persona with a tailor’s precision: he is Colonel Senn Dansaia, Imperial bureaucrat and all-around stick in the mud. He’s pieced together Dansaia’s tastes and habits, routines and tics, until he can wear the man like a finely fitted coat with no seams showing. Of course, he’s just gotten to the point where he’s comfortable with Colonel Dansaia when everything goes to shit.

It starts out as a routine information drop: a few dates and names Draven might find interesting, all buried in the guts of a data chip he presses into the palm of his contact in the back end of a seedy Coruscant bar. He buys a drink that tastes like bantha piss and sits at the bar for verisimilitude.

He’s got a thick cloak on over his imperial uniform, the hood pulled low over his brow. It’s a shit disguise, of course, but Colonel Dansaia isn’t the kind of man that puts a lot of effort into going unseen. Dansaia likes the thrill of danger he gets from slumming it, and he likes the fear and respect he gets when the other people in the bar see the glint of imperial insignia on his chest.

Cassian downs the drink, slaps a few credits on the bar, and then he’s on his way back to the barracks, cloak pulled tight to obscure the lines of his uniform and to block the worst of the rain.

He’s looking forward to getting back to his rooms and shedding Dansaia for a few hours when he hears it: the high-pitched whine of a blaster set to stun.

Fuck, he thinks, and everything blurs to white.

***

When he wakes, he’s on his knees, hands tied behind his back. His head is lolling against his chest; he tries to lift it and falls onto his side as a wave of dizziness hits him. He feels a wetness at his temple and on his lips. He licks at his lips, tastes copper, and tries to think. Someone’s punched him. Or no, someone stunned him with a blaster: he remembers the noise.

He blinks. Everything is bright, too bright, but this is important. He forces his eyes open. All he sees is grey: the floor and walls and ceiling, all poured from the same dull concrete, cast in the glare of an overzealous fluorescent light. There’s no furniture, but in the center of the floor there’s a small drain, and circling it Cassian can just make out faint rust-colored stains.

Not good.

There’s a moment of hysteria: how did they know? Colonel Dansaia had been perfect; he _knows_ it. He flicks through his performance over the past few weeks, searching for anything that would have tipped off Imperial Intelligence. What gave him away?

But then, as he forces his breathing into an even pattern, he realizes something’s off.

He’s been in Imperial interrogation rooms a few times now, usually just bringing reports to coworkers while they’re up to their arms in screams. Once, he’d needed to validate a date for a maintenance query and had walked in on an enhanced interrogation specialist doing her job with gusto. The guy on the floor had been a rebel operative, no one that would recognize Cassian, thank the stars.

Colonel Dansaia was squeamish: he’d glanced at the blood on the floor and then stared at the walls. The white, shiny walls.

The Imperials haven’t caught him. The Rebels have.

 _Fuck_.

Right on cue, the door opens with a soft whirr and a man of middling height strides through. He fiddles with his data pad but lowers it once he notices Cassian is watching him. “Well, what have we here?”

Cassian lets out a shaky breath: he was right. He’s in a rebel bolt hole. He recognizes the man from a file he’d seen strewn atop Draven’s desk during his last debrief. Karsus Vittor, mid-level intelligence expert. Specializes in electroshock interrogation. Something twists in his gut.

Vittor reaches out, and Cassian flinches, expecting a slap—but instead Vittor only brushes his hands over the rank pin on Cassian’s chest. He unclips it and turns it over in his hands so that the name inscribed on the back glints in the light. “Colonel Senn Dansaia, eh?” He says it in an affable manner, like they’re friends here, like nothing bad is going to happen.

Cassian stares at the wall just behind Vittor’s head. What exactly is going on?

Vittor frowns, like he’s personally disappointed by Cassian’s silence. “I’d appreciate if you answer me when I ask you a question, Colonel. Do you understand?”

“Yessir,” he mutters. Better to play along until this all gets sorted out.

Vittor offers him an insincere smile. “Much better.” He pockets the rank pin and then keys Cassian’s alias into his data pad. He waits for a second as the results fill up the screen, and then begins to read.

Meanwhile, Cassian tries to think through the lingering effects of the stunner. Vittor’s datapad search will have thrown up a host of alerts on Draven’s personal data pad by now, and probably a few on the pads of the other handlers as well. They’ll know he's here by now. He glances up at the ceiling. They’ll have eyes on him, probably through a camera in the light fixture.

This has to be an accident. They’ll put a stop to this, as soon as they notice. There are ways to do it that wouldn’t blow his cover: Draven or one of the other high-ranking handlers could send a message saying they want to run the interrogation personally.

Vittor looks up from the pad. “Colonel Senn Dansaia,” he says. “Middle of your class at the academy. Just stationed here a few weeks ago. Is that right?”

Cassian needs to stall. He wets his lips and gives Vittor the kind of affronted look that Dansaia would think appropriate for the situation. “Right then. This is clearly a mistake, or someone’s idea of a joke. Release me and I won’t press charges.”

Vittor bites his lip like he’s genuinely regretful. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Colonel.”

Cassian lets him have it, then: he pours on the outrage and the bargaining and the bewilderment, and does everything a bureaucrat in far over his head would do. Vittor takes it like oil rolling off water, all insincere regret and bland non-answers.

All the while, Cassian keeps an eye on Vittor’s pad, waiting for the blink or chirp of a message alert. But the minutes drag on, and as his knees begin to ache against the concrete and he starts shivering despite himself, the screen stays dark and silent.

At last, Vittor steps back with a moue of regret. “If you aren’t willing to talk…”

The doors hiss and Cassian straightens; there, it took longer than he thought, but better late than never.

But it’s not another intel officer. It’s an interrogation droid: slim and polished to a mirror shine. He can tell by the chassis that it’s a new model; it goes up to twenty thousand volts if he remembers the gossip correctly. Cassian finds it on his pain scale, compares it to what he’s faced before. He swallows. His throat feels dry. “What’s that?”

Vittor doesn’t bother to reply. With a last searching look at Cassian, he turns to boot up the torture droid. Once it’s alight with whirring noises and static crackle, he removes the electroshock wand from the droid’s side and turns back around.

It’s then that Cassian realizes: this is going to happen. Nobody will be coming in to save him. There’s been a mix-up: Vittor’s pad never sent the alert to Draven, or Draven’s pad never received it, or there’s some crisis at the rebel base and they’re all otherwise occupied, or all dead. Either way, he’s alone.

But he doesn’t have to go through with this. He can still tell Vittor who he really is. He’s not supposed to break cover for anyone; it’s so deeply ingrained that he hasn’t even considered it until now, but it’s an option. He can tell Vittor the truth, bark out the codes that will let Vittor know he’s not lying. And then he’ll walk out of here, safe and sound, and file an incident report letting Draven know about the mistake—

The mistake. Because it is, after all, a mistake. It has to be.

The thought hits him like a shuttle slamming into atmosphere. What if it’s _not_ a mistake? What if Draven _has_ noticed he’s here? What if this is exactly where Draven wants him to be?

There’s a humming in his ears and a twisting in his gut. He’s loyal to the bone; the Resistance is all he has. He would never betray the cause—but what if Draven wasn’t sure? What if he’d ordered Cassian captured, ordered him tortured, just to see what might spill out of his lips? What he might give away?

Draven wouldn’t…

Draven absolutely would. Or Cassian wouldn’t be here.

He’s going to be tortured. He’s supposed to be tortured. This isn’t a mistake at all. He closes his eyes, readies himself for the pain, and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

The suspense is too much; he’s on the verge of screaming at Vittor to hurry up when he opens his eyes and sees Vittor watching him, electroshock wand gripped so tightly in his hand that his knuckles are white. But he doesn’t touch the wand to Cassian’s skin. “I don't want to have to do this to you, you know.” He licks his lips. “Say the word and I’ll put this away, and we’ll have a nice civilized chat. There'd be no shame in it.”

The odd thing is even though it's the kind of boilerplate language that precedes every interrogation Cassian has witnessed or performed, Vittor actually seems to mean some of his regret. It's not the obvious regret: the big sigh after he speaks or the furrow of his brow—those are fake.

But there: the minute tightening of his jaw, the way his eyes flick from side to side like he's looking for a predator lying in wait. Something is off. Cassian opens his mouth to say something—what, he isn’t sure—but then Vittor’s face hardens and he’s stepping in and pressing the wand to the soft flesh of Cassian’s stomach.

As the first shock rips through his body, he frantically racks his brain, desperate for anything that might have suggested to the rebels that he’s less than loyal. But he can’t think straight; between the waves of electricity coursing through his body he feels unmoored, undone.

And then the second shock hits, and the third. Distantly, he can hear screaming.

All there is, is pain: a galaxy of it, filled with stars of agony and muddy nebulae of dull suffering. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts—

He doesn’t say a word.

Oh, there's things he could give up—things neither the rebels nor the Empire would care about: old duty rosters, petty gossip, obsolete passwords—all of those mundane details of Colonel Dansaia’s life, the detritus of bureaucracy that clutter up his days. But he can't let the words past his lips: if he lets a single thing slip, it will all come out, and the whole charade will come tumbling down. And he will have failed.

The shocks stop.

It takes him a moment to notice. When he does, he raises his head as much as he’s able, blinks dumbly at Vittor. Is it over? Has Cassian has proven himself loyal?

Vittor is staring down at him, something dark and angry flickering in his eyes. “You’re being very difficult, Colonel.”

“’m sorry,” Cassian slurs. His mouth can’t seem to make quite the right sounds.

Vittor mutters a curse. “This wasn’t—you weren’t supposed to make this so fucking hard—”

And Cassian laughs, because if they’re going to play with his loyalty like this, he’ll throw it back in their faces, play his fucking role to the hilt. He _is_ Colonel Dansaia, it’s all he is, all he’s ever been. He curls his lip and spits out the words as best he’s able: “ _rebel scum.”_

Vittor looks like he’s been slapped: his face flushes a furious red, and he clenches his jaw hard enough that Cassian can hear the grind of his teeth. “Don’t call me that.”

Cassian realizes he’s laughing, he can’t help it. “Rebel—”

Vittor kicks him in the side, hard, and Cassian laughs and laughs and laughs as the kicks rain down, until the pain is too much and he can’t fill his lungs with air.

He slumps and curls in on himself; Vittor grabs a handful of his hair and yanks him back to an upright position. “If the droid can’t jog your memory,” he snarls, “maybe something else will.” And then he’s reaching for his belt.

It takes a second for Cassian to understand what he means. He made it through the shocks, surely Draven wouldn’t sign off on this? Surely they wouldn’t let Vittor do this too?

But then Vittor’s cock is springing free from his pants, and once again, Cassian’s reality tilts and reshapes itself around the horrible truth that this, too, is going to happen.

He closes his eyes. “Rebel scum,” he whispers.

Above him, Vittor snarls, and then there are rough hands tearing at his pants.

He tries to hold the numbness of the electroshock about him. But he can’t: with his eyes shut, everything is reduced to the feel of hands on his body, and cold air on his naked, sweat-soaked skin.

There’s no gentleness in Vittor; he’s too far gone in his anger for that. He shoves Cassian’s head down against the cement floor and kicks his legs apart so that his ass is pushed up in the air. Cassian is so dizzy he lists to the side, but Vittor keeps him in place by yanking on the hem of his shirt like a bridle.

“Always knew rebels were monsters,” Cassian manages to bite out. “Always knew—”

He loses his words in a hoarse scream when Vittor stabs his cock into his ass.

“I didn’t want to do this,” Vittor snaps as he shoves his hips forward, inch by torturous inch. “You didn’t have to—you made me do this.”

Cassian doesn’t argue. Words are beyond him by now, all he can do is float over the crests and valleys of the pain, dripping snot and tears onto the cement below him. When had he started crying?

There are strange sounds spilling from his mouth: shaky cries and half-voiced moans. He feels like a droid, his limbs moved at the whim of some system or circuitry he can’t comprehend. He wishes he were one in truth, all made of polished chrome, so that none of this would hurt him.

Because it does hurt. The pain is awful; there’s a wetness between his legs that he can tell without looking is blood. Each of Vittor’s thrusts breaks him open further and more terribly too, until his body feels like one giant wound.

Behind him, Vittor’s breathing has become harsher, his thrusts faster. Cassian wrenches his eyes shut and wills himself to get through this. He has to. He has to pass this test.

Vittor’s teeth sink into his neck as his thrusts fall out of rhythm, erratic and brutal in their force. Cassian feels him tense, feels him jerk, feels the hot pulse of semen inside him.

And finally, the room is quiet.

Cassian blinks, takes a breath, and takes stock of his hurts. There’s semen and blood both, hot and slick between his thighs. Every nerve in his body is humming with a dull pain, and he thinks his ribs might be bruised. But it’s over. It’s done. He passed the test. But stars, it hurts.

He lets himself slump to the ground, facedown. All he wants is to pass out, to sleep, and maybe never wake.

There’s a hand on his temple and he can’t help the silent sob that breaks from him: is this not enough? Has he not proved his loyalty a million times over? Is there going to be more?

But Vittor doesn’t pinch him or slap him, only smooths the hair away from Cassian’s ear with something like gentleness, and then he’s leaning in, close enough that his lips touch Cassian’s ear, quiet enough that the room’s cameras will never hear him. “Stars, I'm sorry,” Vittor whispers, “but it was the only way they would trust me, sir.”

And there it is.

Cassian would laugh, if he had the strength left in his body. This isn’t about Cassian. This was never about Cassian. There's a perverse humor to it: a rebel disguised as an imperial officer, interrogated by an imperial officer disguised as a rebel, all for the benefit of a heartless bastard disguised as his boss.

He lets his eyes fall closed and his head fall back, spent.

***

The rebels dump him in an alley close to the Imperial barracks.

He gets back a quarter after curfew. He’d anticipated it being a problem, and spent the whole walk back to the base fumbling over how to handle it. He could knock out both of the guards, or kill them, doctor the security footage—

But it turns out to be fine. The two lieutenants of the checkpoint don't even take his name down on the tardy roster. They smile at him, wink at him. He knows he looks like a mess: hair mussed, eyes red and tear sheened, lips swollen and spit slick.

Dansaia has always been a bit of a stick in the mud, and they’re happy for him, happy that he finally got to have a bit of the fun all officers should indulge in once and a while. Cassian smiles through the pain and holds back a wince as the older of the two lieutenants claps him on the shoulder with a hoot and waves him through the door.

Once he's in his room he takes a few neurotabs for the electroshock damage, a swig of cheap ethanol for the pain, and then sits on the floor of the bathroom staring at nothing for the next two hours. He turns the heat up high enough that his skin turns an angry red, but he can't stop shivering.

Later that night he stumbles to his pad and keys in the password to his secure line with Draven, who is disguised in his pad as the property manager of a vacation rental on a nearby moon. He goes there every few weeks, or that’s what the ticket stubs say, at least.

“I noticed vermin in the house on my last visit,” he types, his fingers clumsy. “Please handle removal as you see fit.” He thinks over whether he should allude to Vittor more specifically, but decides against it. Draven will have watched the recording of the session by now. He’ll have seen it, all of it.

He doesn't report the incident through Imperial channels. He tells himself it's because it fits his cover: Colonel Dansaia would die of shame if he had to account in clinical detail how he was raped, how he cried and twisted and begged.

The next morning, he wakes with acid heavy in his stomach and a burning in his throat. There’s a blue light flickering on his pad. He eyes it like a snake, and then carefully, gingerly, clicks the message icon.

“Acknowledged.”

He deletes it, flings the pad against the wall, and gets ready for Colonel Dansaia’s day.

***

Months later, Cassian sheds Senn Dansaia like a worn cloak and returns to Crait. He goes to Draven’s private office, dutifully hands over all the relevant data, makes his final report. As he finishes, Draven gestures with his hand, as if he’s just remembered something.

“By the way—regarding Karsus Vittor.”

Vittor. Cassian’s blood begins to pound in his ears. “Sir?”

“I thought you should know: we decided to keep him. He's a useful conduit for false information.”

There’s a numbness in his chest. He tries to swallow around the tightness in his throat. “Of course, sir.” His voice sounds strange and discordant in his own ears.

Draven busies himself ordering the clutter on his desk into piles. “We’ll have to take care your paths don't cross in the future, I’ll put a note in your file.” He doesn’t look at Cassian.

“Yessir.”

Draven pauses, his mouth tight, and for a second Cassian thinks he might say something else.

“Sir?”

Draven looks away. “Close the door on your way out.”


End file.
